RECENT MOVEMENT IN ORTHODOX CHURCH 65

Damascus, on the death of the patriarch, requested the
Holy Synod at Constantinople to appoint a certain Gregory,
or failing him, any other desirable person. Thus Erotheos,
a member of the brotherhood, who was reported to be of
enormous wealth, was chosen by the Constantinople clergy,
and accepted by the Holy Synod at Damascus, consisting
at that time chiefly of lonians. The contemptuous native
account of the long rule of Erotheos, which lasted from 1850
to 1885, accuses him of all the faults and vices of his six
Ionian predecessors, as well as of personal immorality. In
fact the obviously exaggerated indictment overreaches itself
in the final statement that during his patriarchate the Church
of Antioch was disgraced, irreligion and immorality flour-
ished everywhere, churches and schools were razed to the
ground. "Had he lived longer/5 so the campaign docu-
ment excitedly winds up, " the utter destruction of the
church would have been certain." Stripped of its exag-
geration, the account certainly reveals a very serious con-
dition of misrule. Before the death of Erotheos, the laymen
of Damascus, backed by the national party throughout the
see, had determined to get rid of foreign control by working
for a restoration of the slat/us quo ante, with a purely native
hierarchy from the patriarch down. Even in the worst clays
of Ionian rule, the Holy Synod had never lacked for one or
two native bishops. In the struggle to secure the next patri-
arch, the native or "national" element, was beaten, so it
alleges, by an intrigue, headed by Nicodemus, Patriarch of
Jerusalem, assisted, by his brother of Constantinople and by
the Greek Government successfully supporting the candidacy
of Gerasimos. This prelate was a cultivated man of gra-
cious bearing and good scholarship, but his Greek blood,
together with his membership in the brotherhood, made him
persona non grata to the natives. The object of this intrigue
was to persuade the Sublime Porte that the native element
was working in the interests of Russian influence in the see.
Russia has always been the bogie-man to dangle before the
eyes of Turkey. To this clay the cry of "Wolf! Wolf!" (if
one may thus call the Russian bear) is the final resource
employed to down an opponent. In 1891, Nicodemus fell